10 Transportation Safety Issues That Need to Improve in 2016

For many people, going to work tired is something we suck up and deal with—it's the price we have to pay, after all, for staying up way past our bedtimes binge-watching something on Netflix. But in the transportation industry, fatigue is more than just a pesky side effect of nighttime rituals—it can be deadly. In its 2016 Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements, the National Transportation Safety Board listed reducing fatigue-related accidents in aviation, road, rail, and shipping as their top priority, noting that roughly one out of every five major accidents it investigated from 2001 until 2013 were caused, in part, by operators too tired to do their jobs.

Consider the history: Several major crashes have been blamed on bad decision-making due to fatigue, notably the Colgan Air accident in 2009, in which 50 people were killed—and which led the Federal Aviation Administration to increase the mandated rest time between flights from eight to ten hours. But more needs to be done, the NTSB said, including closer attention to scheduling and medical screening for conditions that can affect the quality of sleep. On the ground, improving rail safety oversight is another urgent item on the NTSB's list this year: More than a dozen passengers have been killed in the last year due to rail accidents such as an Amtrak derailment outside of Philadelphia and a commuter rail crash in Westchester County, New York.

And while the NTSB investigates major transportation incidents and accidents, it can only suggest—not enforce—the reforms that result from its findings. Its annual list, then, is meant in part to shame government departments into action—especially when those departments may be subject to unhealthy pressures from the very industries they oversee.

Thus, it's not unusual to see some issues turn up on the list repeatedly until something gets done. This year’s roster includes several repeat offenders from last year, including a call to end substance impairment by operators; an end to distractions like texting; fixing an alarming number of private aviation accidents caused by “loss of control” or pilot error, and requiring better monitoring of medical fitness for duty.

New items on the list this year include wider use of collision avoidance technology for highway vehicles; strengthening protection for occupants of cars, buses and other road vehicles, and expanding use of data recorders—which are already required for commercial airliners, but, as the NTSB pointed out, are not found on many smaller private planes or on other modes, including some categories of trains and ferries. These recorders are an investigator’s single most valuable tool in determining what went wrong, the NTSB said. A complete list of the issues is below.